[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 62 (Thursday, May 18, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H2886-H2889]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             BORDER FENCING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
the remaining time until midnight as the designee of the majority 
leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to address 
you and the House of Representatives.
  As you all know, I have been to Iraq a number of times, and our 
troops over there in the early stages of this theater and in the 
overall global war on terror, and it is also known, that we did not 
send over there humvees that were armored because that was not 
something that was anticipated was the IEDs. As they began to 
materialize and manifest themselves, this Nation and our military and 
all branches of the services that were exposed, they aggressively moved 
down the path of armoring our equipment.
  As I was there, I saw the retrofitting of humvees, the retrofitting 
of trucks, the retrofitting of the equipment that was going out on to 
the streets and the roads of Iraq. Given the nature of the logistics of 
the difficulty, I saw people that mobilized, put their equipment in 
shape, and it was not very long before nothing that went outside the 
wire was left unarmored.
  So the argument that we did not have enough bulletproof vests or we 
did not have enough armor, that is true early in the war. It is not 
true today, and we have provided resource after resource to our people 
in the Middle East and our people in this global war on terror.
  It needs to be noted, Mr. Speaker, that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld 
has been in the front of this. They have done everything they can to 
accelerate the development, the manufacturing, the delivery and I will 
say the installation of the armor on our humvees, on our mobile 
vehicles and the bulletproof vests and the equipment for our military. 
There has never been a military in history that was so well-armored as 
our military, Mr. Speaker, and I do think it does a disservice to the 
efforts of all to bring up the issue and make the allegation that that 
is not enough over there.
  Those would be isolated cases, if they are anything, but isolated. I 
would hope that that information comes to me so I can look into it with 
my colleagues who just left the floor. I wish they were here to respond 
to that, Mr. Speaker.
  But I came here to talk about the issue that the President has raised 
today when he made his trip down to the southwest border, the Arizona-
Mexico border, Mr. Speaker. Air Force One left Andrews Air Force Base 
early this morning, headed out along that way, landed and they did some 
stops along the southwest border of Arizona and Mexico and then turn 
around, came back here into Washington, D.C.
  I have got a clip here from ABC News that says, Bush says border 
fencing makes sense, Mr. Speaker, and I have made that statement for a 
long time. I will contend that it does make sense. It makes a lot of 
sense, and I am here, Mr. Speaker, to endorse that statement and that 
philosophy. I may want a little bit more fence and I may want it a 
little more solid than the President wants, but philosophically, we are 
in key on this border fence.
  A week ago, last weekend, so about 10, 11 days ago, I spent 4 days on 
the ground on the border between Arizona and Mexico. I did not go on a 
formal CODEL. I did not go on a formal, appointed trip. I went down 
there on an unannounced trip because even though I appreciate the 
hospitality that comes from the border patrol and the National Guard 
and the other entities down there that are defending our border and the 
work that they do and the way that they have welcomed me and given me 
the guided tour in the past times I have been down on the border, this 
time I chose to go down on the

[[Page H2887]]

border in a less announced fashion, less formal fashion, to be able to 
go in and simply show up at our ports of entry, show up at our border 
patrol operations and be there to see simultaneously, and I will say 
spontaneously, what is going on.
  This last trip I learned more down there than I have any previous 
trip, and the reasons are because it was essentially a surprise trip, a 
spontaneous trip down to the border. I have spoken about this on the 
floor in the past, Mr. Speaker, but I just quickly reiterate that in my 
time there I went to a place down on the border at Naco, Arizona. There 
they used to have illegal traffic where vehicles just drove across the 
border because there was no barrier. Sometimes they would be hauling 
illegals, sometimes they would be hauling illegal drugs, and sometimes 
they would be hauling illegal drugs and illegals into the United 
States.
  The violence down there was getting to be intolerable, and the 
traffic was essentially relentless. They finally built a fence, Mr. 
Speaker, and I will call it a wall. It is a steel one, with corrugated, 
heavy duty steel with horizontal corrugations in it. Once that fence 
went in place, it cut down on a fair amount of illegal traffic. From 
the links of the fence that was built high enough that people cannot 
climb over it, with a screen to extend it above and solid enough down 
into the ground that I will say I did not see any signs that anyone had 
gone underneath it, extended from there on were vehicle barriers that 
would keep vehicles from driving across the border but would not keep a 
human being from walking underneath the vehicle barrier and coming into 
the United States. After a mile or two of that, it simply went off into 
a fence, and then some places there was not even a fence and not even a 
marker that one could tell exactly where the border was.
  But it was an improvement, Mr. Speaker, and I saw where people had 
crossed the border there, and it is a consistent process. There are 
tracks that go continually. You do not have to be, I will say, a guide 
or a hunter to be able to see that, and I am a hunter, but it is easy 
enough to go along that border and pick the places where they are 
coming through the fence, crossing the border, doing so without much 
impediment and doing so with impunity, Mr. Speaker, at that location at 
Naco, Arizona.
  And then I moved along and went on down to the Tohona O'odham 
Reservation, and while I was there, there was a drug smuggler that had 
been stopped by them. Underneath a box in the false bed of a pick-up, 
there was 18 bails of marijuana, roughly 10 pounds or a little more per 
bail, at least 180 pounds of marijuana hidden underneath the bed of 
that pick-up truck. It was pretty good body work that was done on the 
south side of the border for the marijuana that came in from there into 
the north side of the border. So I was there to see that apprehension 
and the confiscation of those drugs, which I hope end up in a 
prosecution and conviction of the person, whom I believe is guilty.
  That individual had tattoos from his waist up to his neck. He had a 
13 tattooed inside his arm. I am pretty sure it was an indication he 
was MS-13, Mara Salvatrucha 13, the most violent and dangerous gang 
that has been known in the Western hemisphere.
  This individual was hauling marijuana into the United States, and 
they told me that, even though they had caught him, perhaps he was a 
decoy with 180 to 200 pounds of marijuana that they had sacrificed in 
order to run a larger load through when everyone converged on him.
  There are mountains down there that have lookouts on the mountains 
and two men per lookout with infrared optics and for the daytime, high 
quality, clear, daytime optics and automatic weapons, AK-47s, well-
supplied, solar panels to recharge their radios, their radios that send 
out encrypted audio so they can talk to each other and we cannot listen 
to them, but they have scanners so they can listen to us, Mr. Speaker. 
That is going on where they observe all of the travel routes along the 
entire border. Anyplace they want to smuggle drugs, they know where the 
border patrol is, where the law enforcement officers are, and they are 
able to talk from hilltop to hilltop, mountaintop to mountaintop, line 
of sight to line of sight, and be able to communicate with their entire 
network and operation. There are at least 45 mountaintops covering that 
whole area.
  That is the kind of position that would be taken if there were a 
military invasion, Mr. Speaker. They are taking it in order to control 
transportation routes so that they can run their drugs up into the 
United States.

                              {time}  2345

  And the drugs that come into the United States from the southern 
border are, according to our Federal Government's announcement, 90 
percent of the illegal drugs in America come across our southern border 
with Mexico. Ninety percent, Mr. Speaker, at a value of $60 billion a 
year. That is $60 billion, with a B, a year in illegal drugs coming 
across into the United States from our southern border. Those are 
illegal drugs brought in here by illegal entries and drug smugglers.
  But just the illegals seeking entry into the United States, in 2004, 
the Border Patrol stopped 1,159,000. Turned them back, to use the 
President's phrase. For 2005, that calculates out to be 1,188,000 
turned back across the southern border into Mexico. Something like 
155,000 other than Mexicans came into the United States, many of those, 
in the past, have been caught and released. We are working to change 
that policy. We haven't succeeded totally in changing that policy, but 
I do believe we have a real commitment to eliminating the catch and 
release policy with the OTMs, the ``other than Mexicans.''
  Many of the Mexicans that are caught, and 80 to 85 percent of the 
illegal entries into the United States across our southern border are 
Mexicans, those 80 to 85 percent, when they are caught, they are, I 
will say, presumably and likely, and I hope 100 percent of them are, at 
least fingerprinted, photographed, identified and then they are put on 
a bus, taken to a port of entry where they are let out of the bus and 
they walk back through the turnstile, so to speak, back into Mexico. 
Sometimes we transport them further down south, closer to where their 
home territory is, in hopes that they won't be back quite so quickly.
  I have asked the Border Patrol to produce the numbers for me so we 
can crunch the database and find out of that 1,188,000 how many of them 
had crossed the border before. How many times are we catching them, 
sending them back, releasing them into their own country and then 
catching them again. At least 30 percent of that, according to the 
Border Patrol, are people that have been caught before. So that is 30 
percent of the 1,188,000 were caught at least twice in the same year. 
So we really haven't turned back 1,188,000. We have turned back 70 
percent of 1,188,000, but the other 30 percent we have done so twice, 
and perhaps some of them more than that.
  More details to come as the days and weeks unfold, Mr. Speaker, and 
as I seek to pry into this information and bring a better perspective 
to the American people.
  President Bush says border fencing makes sense. I say border fencing 
makes sense. In the time we have between now and the end of this 
period, I want to demonstrate how much sense one can make with a border 
fence; but I first want to allude to a study that was done by a Robert 
Rector at the Heritage Foundation who, for weeks, has been poring 
through statistics in trying to understand what the bills before the 
United States Senate really say and what they mean and how many people 
that might be that could be granted amnesty according to the Hagel-
Martinez bill that was being debated before the United States Senate 
today.
  That study came out, on Monday it was released, and it had a low of 
not 11 million, not 12 million, but the low was 103 million people 
legalized into the United States under Hagel-Martinez. That was the 
low. The high, if you presume the 20 percent growth and guest worker 
that was essentially uncapped, that would take it to 193 million. Well, 
there is a Bingaman and Feingold amendment that capped the guest 
workers, took the 325,000 annual cap down to 200,000. Then, when I 
apply that math to this spreadsheet, I come up with a number, Mr. 
Speaker, of 66,100,000 that would be legalized to bring into the United 
States, even after the Bingaman-Feingold amendment. That is 66,100,000.

[[Page H2888]]

  That is if you assume that those that come into the United States 
would, by the chain migration rule, where they can bring in their 
spouse and their children, and when they access citizenship they can 
bring in their parents, their spouse, their children, and their 
siblings, that each one of them would only bring in 1.2 people. So I 
don't know anyone that would only have 1.2 or that small a number they 
would want to bring into the United States. I presume that number would 
be significantly larger than that.
  So we checked with the USCIS, the United States Citizenship 
Immigration Services, and these are the people that speak for the 
President. Their number was not 1.2 for every legalized amnestied alien 
that would be given a path to citizenship here in the United States. 
Their number was four people for every one. So I plugged that into the 
spreadsheet, Mr. Speaker, and this 66,100,000 became 88 million and a 
little more. That is 88 million people with the legislation in the 
United States Senate today.
  We are debating this subject as if it were 11 million or 12 million 
people that would be given amnesty and legalized, and we are really in 
that number somewhere between 66 million and 88 million, and perhaps 
more. Now, I submit this question, the question that is seldom asked 
and not very often answered by those who are for a guest worker plan: 
American people, is there such a thing as too much immigration? Is 
there such a thing as too much?
  And the follow-up question is: If there is, then how much is too 
much? Is 11 million too much, or 5 million, or 1 million, or 12 
million, or 13 million, or 20 million, or 66 million, or 88 million, or 
103 million? How many are too many?
  How many of them will fundamentally forever alter the United States 
and put a burden on our services that we can never recover from? What 
is that number? How many does it take before they can no longer be 
assimilated, Mr. Speaker?
  Those are legitimate questions that need to be asked and answered, 
and I would submit those questions to the President of the United 
States. He is leading this debate, and he has an obligation to stand up 
before the American people and answer some questions.
  Mr. President, how much is too much? Is there such a thing as too 
much? And if the answer is yes, then how much is too much? How many are 
too many? Please give us a number. And, Mr. President, how many do you 
think are granted a path to citizenship and permanent residency in the 
United States under Hagel-Martinez? How many do you think, Mr. 
President?

  I believe that number is at least 66 million. My number is 66.1 
million; and I would submit that if one would go back to 1789 and the 
ratification of the Constitution, the earliest records we have, and 
actually the earliest solid records we have are in 1820, and add up 
every single person that has been brought into the United States 
legally, through Ellis Island and through shipping manifests and every 
way we can add those up, the records and the data that are available 
today, totaling from 1820, when the first records begin, up until 2000, 
when my last records are available, that number, Mr. Speaker, in all 
the history of America, is 66,100,000 total allowed into the United 
States under an immigration policy. Hagel-Martinez matches the total 
for the history of America almost exactly, a minimum of 66,100,000.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, how do we stop this? How do we seal up our border? 
And I have submitted many times that we need to seal the border, end 
birthright citizenship, shut off the jobs magnet, and apply attrition. 
So that when people can no longer get jobs in the United States because 
employers will have to pay sanctions, then they will decide they will 
go back home. When they do that, many of them will go back home with an 
American education and a new free enterprise ideal, and they will be 
able to help their home country grow. Mexico needs it.
  It is a crying shame what is going on down there. The levels of 
corruption and the inability of a government to provide a functioning 
society in the midst of all the natural resources they have is a crying 
shame. But we can't fix it by taking on the poverty of the world. We 
cannot export American values, and we will not be able to maintain them 
unless we can seal our border.
  And, Mr. Speaker, I will submit that it is not that hard to do. The 
President asked for another $1.9 billion for our southern border. Now, 
no one is saying what we are already spending on that southern border, 
but I can tell you it is more than $6 billion spent on our southern 
border. So the President has asked for another $1.9 billion. That will 
take us to more than $8 billion. That is $8 billion for less than 2,000 
miles, which is easily $4 million a mile.
  Now, how many Americans couldn't take on a mile of that border and 
guarantee nobody is going to get across it if we just paid them $4 
million? I will submit what I would do. I would take this desert that I 
have here, this cardboard box is essentially a desert, and I would 
build a wall, a concrete wall. I would go in here and, Mr. Speaker, 
this gap in here represents a trench that I would dig down right along 
about 100 feet north of our border so that we had some room to work on 
both sides of it, and we could put a fence right on the border.
  This would represent the desert. I would dig the trench, and then I 
would slip form and pour a concrete footing. And this example would be 
this, about 4 feet, or we could go 6 feet deep easily, and about 2 feet 
on either side of the wall a notch that can receive precast concrete 
panels. I would slip form that and I would dig the trench, and I would 
pour this concrete right in here, right behind my machine.
  And here would stand, then, the foundation for a precast concrete 
wall. A very simple project to go through. Once this is established in 
this location, then we bring in the precast concrete panels. And these 
precast concrete panels look like this. They are 12 feet high, 10 feet 
wide, and they way 9,000 pounds each. You pick them up with a crane and 
set them here in this foundation.
  Just this simple, Mr. Speaker. Install it like an erector set. You 
put these panels together. I have spent my life in the construction 
business, and I can tell you that it is not that hard to do. Except I 
have to have the rings on top so I can put the wire up there. They go 
together this simply, Mr. Speaker. Not quite this fast, but pretty 
quickly. And I can tell you that the small crews we have had in my 
construction business could build a mile of this a day easily. You can 
add a lot more manpower and a lot more machines to move this a lot more 
quickly.
  But as you can see, I would build a wall that is 12 feet high, and 
these are 10 foot wide panels. It has a footing underneath it that is 4 
feet deep. We can go 6 feet deep cheaply and easily. And we can put on 
top of it then a nice little, it might be too hard to do here, but we 
can put our wire on top of this wall. I have a little bit of wire, but 
it is a little too hard to put together here. Maybe another time I will 
string this along and set it on top to demonstrate what that looks 
like.
  We can also, with a wall like this, we can put on infrared cameras, 
we can put on vibration sensors, we can put on motion sensors; but what 
it does is it makes it very difficult to cross this wall. It makes it 
difficult to dig underneath, it is difficult to climb over the top, and 
it slows people down. It is a barrier that causes them to go somewhere 
else, Mr. Speaker.
  Now, this might seem like it is pretty expensive, but the 
administration has submitted a request that will take us up to $4 
million a mile, $8 billion for 2,000 miles of wall, and I can build 
this for less than $500,000 a mile. The administration proposes to 
spend enough money that we could pave an interstate, four lanes down 
through there at least every year, maybe even twice a year, the full 
length of the border for the cost that we are spending to have people 
driving around in Humvees, sitting on ridge tops and trying to chase 
people down that are pouring across a border that is 2,000 miles long.
  And it gets dark down there in the night, like it does anywhere, and 
that is when the activity begins. That is when the illegal smugglers 
start to move. That is when the illegals come in and the illegal drugs 
come in. They don't come through a barrier like this very easily, Mr. 
Speaker. With $500,000 a mile, which would be $1 billion for the entire 
span from San Diego to Brownsville.
  That is one out of every $8 we would spend on our southern border to 
build

[[Page H2889]]

this kind of a barrier that I will submit will stop 90 percent of the 
traffic. And we could even go further and we could put out an RFP and 
let the private sector bid these miles for security. It is that easy 
and that simple, and we are dug into an idea that we are going to 
continue to hire more personnel, grow the size of the Border Patrol, 
and put our military on the border.
  And I will support all those things, if that is the best we have to 
work with. But this makes far more sense. We can cut the number of 
Border Patrol we are using now on the border, and we can increase the 
efficiency of our enforcement. And this wall is an easy wall to 
dismantle as well. We can take it down just about as easily as we can 
put it together. In fact, maybe a little more easily.
  What it says to Mexico is, you haven't been taking care of your 
people. You haven't taken care of your government. You have a corrupt 
form of government. Clean up your act. Clean up your act so people will 
stay in Mexico, and so they want to go to Mexico. Mr. Fox, fix your 
country so we can tear down this wall.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back.

                          ____________________